Imagine life's journey to humans as a series of difficult steps. The chance of completing these steps grows with time. Experts studied when smart life like us could appear in the universe. They found that most of it might come after today, unless these steps are few and planets last a long time. Thi
Ever thought about why some people get really into conspiracy theories online? Scientists spent time looking at 36, 000 Reddit users and all their posts—that's a lot of reading! They found four main ways people join conspiracy groups: some dives right in, some ease into it, some start hot and then c
Visualizing sports can be tricky because of the blend of space, time, and personal data. AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) tech promise exciting prospects, but also pose fresh challenges. Let's share what we've learned from working with sports experts. In the past, we've focused on ath
Florida voters have spoken, and they've said "no" to both abortion rights and recreational marijuana legalization. This decision comes after a significant shift to the right in the state. The abortion measure aimed to protect rights until fetal viability, which is typically around 21 weeks. However,
Ever thought about how we decide to believe something? This theory breaks it down. See, when we believe an event will happen, we either go all in or not at all. No halfway beliefs here! If we decide to believe it, we get a confidence level, let's call it 'c', between 0 and 1. The higher 'c', the mor
Scientists have come up with a clever way to deal with water pollution. They've created tiny graphene cages that can trap and break down nasty chemicals, like N, N-dimethylformamide (DMF), found in water. First, they mix graphene with a special polymer to create a kind of super material called PGO.
Industrial growth and environmental damage often go hand in hand. A major hurdle is dealing with the waste from hard-to-recycle items like medical supplies. Scientists are searching for new materials that fit into a circular economy, where waste is reduced and everything is recycled. The European Un
Imagine an agent that can understand your instructions and navigate through various environments. This is what Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) aims for. However, training these agents to handle new, unseen spaces is a challenge. Why? Well, there's limited data and the environments these agents
Imagine you're training an AI to navigate a world, but you don't have to stick to just one type of simulator. UDE, short for Unified Distributed Environment, is a toolkit that lets AI researchers mix and match different simulation platforms like Gazebo, Unity, Unreal, and OpenAI Gym. This clever too
One of the trickiest parts of teaching a computer to learn through reinforcement is making sure it can handle new situations. A common method is to train the computer to ignore differences between environments. But what if, instead, we taught it to recognize and use those differences to its advantag
